Hello and here we are with another found footage film.
Hooray!
This time around we have a paranormal filmmaker with a serialized program online that inherits some things from his grandmother and among everything is a painting called The Whispering Man, cue the spooky music – DON’T CUE SPOOKY MUSIC, THIS IS FOUND FOOTAGE!
The film begins with a man introducing another episode of his paranormal show he posts online. He is telling us that he has inherited some things from his grandmother and among the items is a painting called The Whispering Man that’s been in his family for three generations. The painting is of an eerie, ghostly face and is thought to be more than JUST a painting. The man decides to use the painting as fodder for his show and starts to have nightmares immediately. As he tries to investigate the painting the more he learns the less he seems to know and the worse the dreams get. What he begins to find though, as he learns more and more about the Whispering Man is that he may have unfortunately found exactly what he was looking for.
I feel bad reviewing this dead on because this is clearly a cast that doesn’t speak english natively so they are acting AND trying to speak english so I am judging them based on how well they can act as they speak in another tongue. THAT’s not fair. It is what it is though.
The acting…isn’t great. It’s generally serviceable but can teeter towards bad. Some of it is the language barrier but some too is just amateurish acting. With that there are also the reveals, which start to get wilder and wilder and stretch the dough too thin. Part of that trouble too is that, when you think that the painting has been with one family for like, thirty years, it’d cut how many people would know about it, or be effected, right? It was in papers and photos for some reason but…er, why? It seems like if the painting was that important it wouldn’t wind up in a sanitarum, right?
Eh, not according to the movie.
It’s an interesting idea, but you’d have to keep it simple and use more subtle means than they do here.
What could be a slow burn, creepy little movie tries to create this big mythology and reasoning and it just doesn’t work. We have a mix of a – creeps while you sleeps – film mixed with a – terror on location – movie and they don’t necessarily work here.
The movie is filmed well enough, the acting isn’t great, and an interesting initial idea just gets derailed by a premise that falls apart. It’s like three puzzles were emptied out and someone tried to put the pieces together and they don’t all fit.
A definite pass for me.
The WHISERING MAN has nothing to say.
1.5 out of 5
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The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 